


Chase it with a Gun

by AwkwardFortuna



Series: Lovers Left Behind [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Gore, Booker doesn't get enough love ya'll, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Copley and Booker bonding, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Copley/Booker?, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mild Gore, Parenthood, Suicide Attempt, he's an angsty boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25579783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardFortuna/pseuds/AwkwardFortuna
Summary: Booker falls asleep like that, his healing head cradled in the palm of her hands, his body floating listlessly in the bathwater.Or,Booker is a mess. So is Copley.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Lovers Left Behind [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857220
Comments: 22
Kudos: 194





	1. I Believe the Children are our Future

“No,” Andromache says it as if she has any right to disagree. “I won’t allow it.” Then, as if in an afterthought, “you’re too young.”

“Too young?” Booker scoffs “I’m almost two hundred-fucking-years old!”

“You. Are. too. young.” She says again but slower this time, as if trying to get a point across that Booker doesn’t seem to understand. _Can't_ understand. And truly, he doesn’t, because young immortals never do. They think that after a hundred years or so they have seen all that death has to offer. They think that they have experienced every loss there is to live by but they haven’t. _Not truly_. The death of a child is an entirely different beast and Booker is just too damn young to know any better.

The prospect of children and family should send him running for the hills, not towards it. He is too young to see the red flags. Too young to know the heartache that awaits him.

“I won’t allow it,” She says again, her face grim and shadowed. 

“I want life!” He screams. “I am tired of death!”

He is so young and naive. So stupidly unafraid. Had she ever been so young? 

“No.” Her voice is dark and hollow, it's the same tone she uses to condemn enemies on the battlefield. 

Booker looks so soft. _So_ _hurt._ She wants nothing more than to reach out and-

“You won’t be seeing me again. Or my family, not ever.”

He should know by now, that fate can never be pre-determined. 

*

When the last of his sons have died, he kills himself.

With a bottle of brandy in one hand and a gun in the other, he lays down in the middle of his family homes' wine cellar and sticks the barrel between his teeth. He swallows down bullets between each shot of liquor until eventually, the chamber is just as empty as the bottle in his hand. 

‘Children will be the death of you,’ Andromache had said. And like always, she was right.

*

Three days later she finds him there, plastered to the floorboards by the layers of thick, dried blood, caked to the back of his head. Keeping him stuck against the floorboards like glue.

She takes the gun from him. Next, she takes the bottle from his limp fingers and she drinks the rest of it in one quick swig.

“Did I ever tell you I had a son?”

She says it so quietly that he has to strain to hear her. “Many of them actually. I’ve had many sons. And daughters. But they’re lost in the wind now. After my first child, I gave all the rest away. I’ve probably met them in passing...I’ve probably even killed some of them.”

She reaches over his bloodied form for the next bottle. She plucks the cork out with her teeth and chugs it all before throwing it to the side in a resounding _crack_ of shattering glass. 

“My first son, he-he died cursing my name.” She laughs something ugly and pained. “He wanted me to save him and there was nothing I could do. There is _nothing_ we can do for them, Booker. Absolutely nothing at all.”

She takes her time with the next bottle, nursing it slowly while her eyes fill with tears.

It is so rare for Andy to cry, but when she does, it’s like she sucks the whole room into a pit of despair with her. Booker can’t stop the wailing that fights its way out of his throat. It’s an ugly sound. It's hideous and so unrefined compared to Andy’s gentle and stoic tears. Booker sounds like a wounded animal, like a dog hit by a train that is somehow still fucking _howling._ There is an incredible pain in his heart and for a second his entire body goes limp as he dies and comes back again, only to resume the wail from where he first left off. 

*

Andromache stays with him throughout the night and well into the morning.

She helps to unglue him from the floorboards, peeling him up and rolling him off of the blood-soaked wood. She pushes his weak and folding form into the bathtub and she undresses him like a mother would a child. She washes the blood and brain matter from his scalp. She cleans him up and presses a kiss against the middle of his forehead, no longer caked in viscera and bullet holes.

Booker falls asleep like that, his healing head cradled in the palm of her hands, his body floating listlessly in the bathwater. 

*


	2. Oh, the Lovers left Behind

Copley knows what it’s like to be consumed by grief.

You tend to forget yourself. You forget how to laugh and how to smile. You forget how to _be_ and you forget who you _were_ without them. When his wife died, she couldn't speak. She couldn't eat without vomiting and she couldn't...she couldn't _recognize_ Copley for who he was. _How_ he was. Hell, she couldn't even recognize herself, most of the time.

When she passed away, it was a relief. It feels selfish to say, but Copley was glad that her suffering had ended, even if it meant that she was taken away from him. And while he was lost to his grief, consuming every bit of alcohol left behind in their home, he came across Merrick and his work. Then, later on, when he thought he'd go mad from researching, he came across _them._

*

Sebastian le Livre is a lot like him. Not completely, obviously they are completely different in that Copley can't die just to get back up again, but Copley recognizes a walking talking broken heart when he sees one. Maybe it's that lost and broken look in his eyes that makes Copley sloppy or maybe its the heat. Regardless, one moment he is tailing the immortal in and out of bars and fruit stands, and the next he is being slammed against a dirt brick wall, his arms twisted up behind him. 

"Who sent you?"

Copley struggles but Sebastian's grip tightens. "W-what makes you think that I-" 

"You're dressed too nice to be a pickpocket. You know the area well enough to track me so you are not a tourist and that gun at your waist is government-issued."

Sebastian takes the gun from him before flipping him around so Copley's back is thrust against the wall. "Sure, there are American bases here, but you're not military. You don't look the type." He tucks the barrel of the gun right up against the soft flesh of Copley's throat. It moves when he swallows but does not waver.

Sebastian leans in close and this time it is not a question, _it's a_ _demand._

_"Who. Sent. You."_

Later, Copley will learn that there are worse ways that their meeting could have gone. He was lucky to be given a chance to speak.

*

It takes time to persuade him.

There are countless nights spent going over documents and research methods for curing diseases and other illnesses. Countless dissertations which Sebastian - no, _Booker_ now- hardly ever finishes. Copley does it for him, reading through each painful page of medical jargon and theory. It appears that no matter what, Merrick is the right guy to go with, though Booker is loathing to work with him.

"He seems like a ponce," Booker says, sipping at a glass of wine. They are in the office of Copley's home, going over files as thick as dictionaries with a bottle of wine split between them. 

"Well, he is certainly an irksome fellow. But he's the top man in his field and he has all the financial backing he needs to fund and find a cure."

"Like I said," Booker takes the wine bottle from Copley's hands and refills his glass with the rest of it. "He's a ponce."

It was strange at first, allowing the immortal man into his home, but now it seems as if the man has always been a fixture within it. The quiet and morose moments that followed immediately after his wife's death seem so far away now. He still feels the ache of it, of course he does, he will never not feel her absence like a wound in his side. But it's a little less fresh now. A little bit muted, like a fading bruise you only notice once you bang it again. 

When Copley comes home after a long hard day of work, he is welcomed with the ruckus that is Booker. And that man is a _ruckus._ Booker is loud in everything that he does. Be it arguing, laughing, or snoring in his sleep. Copley only knows the latter because their days of research have quickly bled into _nights_ of research. Two o'clock in the morning is an ungodly hour to leave a home, regardless if you are immortal or not. So Copley offers Booker his couch to sleep on.

*

It's become a habit for them and it goes like this: Copley calls it a night by closing the last file and setting it upon his desk beside a photo of his wife. Booker's eyes are always drawn to her, she's beautiful with a kind smile. She is also, very painfully, dead. And while Copley catches him noticing, he regales Booker with stories about her and him and how they used to be. Forgetting the time or perhaps willfully ignoring it, until the sun fades into a black night sky.

For being an agent of a secret organization, Copley is painfully honest. It's a trait that can get him killed, but it's an endearing one. Booker can't tell if he admires that or not. 

*

Booker can't sleep.

It's one of those nights where his past catches up to him, haunting him like a ghost. He can hear the sounds of his sons wailing, the putrid smell of oozing wounds. His wife screaming with her last breath as her final push gives way to his last and only son. Sometimes, when he gets like this, he can't sleep for days, weeks, months. One time he went without sleep for so long that he died from the exhaustion. He's just about to get up and head out the door when he hears Copley, crying softly in his bedroom across the hall. 

It's not his place to investigate but he can't help his curiosity so he does it anyway.

There, he finds Copley dwarfed by the size of his bed, curled in on himself, and crying into a silver silk pillow. Somehow, the man is still asleep. The corners of his mouth are pulled down in sadness. A stream of tears begins to form a puddle against the pillowcase. Booker is reaching out for him before he even registers what he's doing. 

He wipes the tears away with the soft backing of his hands. Copley lets out a shaky breath and moves towards him in his sleep, leaning into the touch like a flower leaning towards the sun. Booker caresses his cheek, the curls of his hair, his shoulders. Copley stills, and suddenly he is awake. Booker retracts his hand lightning quick and when Copley turns to look at him he is taken aback by the devastating vulnerability there. The man is too honest. His face betrays every single thing that he feels and the sorrow inside of Booker finds a friend in the sorrow inside of Copley. Something inside of him _aches._

"Will you stay?" Copley asks so softly. So quietly. The moonlight shines through his bedroom window and he is _glowing._ "...Just for tonight. I don't think- I...I can't sleep. I can't sleep tonight."

Booker answers by getting into bed with him, climbing beneath the comforter, and spooning up beside him. They cling to each other like drowning men searching for a piece of land, like two men lost in a sea of grief.

"I had a son," he says quietly against the nape of Copley's neck. So quietly that the man probably doesn't hear him, but he feels the breath against his neck and he knows it's an admission. 

Copley entwines their hands together. There is still a divot in the bed where his wife used to sleep and he brings their hands to it, letting their palms rest against the space she used to inhabit. It is a statement all on its own. 

*

In the morning they part ways, agreeing to meet up three months from now when Booker gets a hold of his team. Copley has Merrick and his company frothing at the mouth with interest. They have all of the right socio-political parties in place and the right amount of men and women paid off in order to form an ambush on a team of unsuspecting militants.

All of their ducks are in a row, all Copley has to do is wait.

*

A part of Copley hadn't believed it. Not truly. Not fully. But the video feed has him on the edge of his seat, unable to look away in awe? horror? he isn't sure. He just knows that when Booker starts to twitch with life against the bloodied ground of the basement, a cool wave of relief washes over him and suddenly, he can breathe again.

*

It all goes to shit and Copley is left with no one. No cure, no wife, no friend to pass the time with at night. There are deaths on his hands and those deaths now mean _nothing_ because he failed. H-he fucking- he _failed._

*

Just as the world suddenly turns upside down it rights itself, just as quick, in the form of Andromache, threatening him with a job that he happily and readily accepts.

*

Drugs, alcohol and the in-betweens. Booker readily takes them all. If only to pass the time, if only to keep his mind from wandering and wailing like a spirit without a body. He is a ghost without a grave. He is seeing double in the crack dens of Paris, he is seeing his wife and children, the disappointed face of Andromache, the vitriol in Yusuf, and the deeply saddened and understanding look from Nicki. He sees it all and he wants it _gone._

*

Six months into his banishment, Copley gives him a call and Booker lets them all go to voicemail before injecting and ingesting more poison into his body. At one moment, he dies from the overdose as the song from his ringtone plays on and on and on.

*

Copley finds him three weeks later on the floor of a prostitute's home. Her name is Beverly and she was kind enough to answer Copley's calls from Booker's phone. 

"You're friends real messed up," she says, smoking a cigarette. "I swear he died a couple of times in there," she says with a laugh, shaking her head in disbelief.

Copley nods grimly at her. She doesn't know how right she is.

*

Copley takes him home. Well, not _home_ exactly. But he likes to think that his home, his office, has become something of a safe place for them. An oasis in a desert, so to speak. Booker fights him at first. He even threatens to kill him a few times. One day, he even comes close to it, but Booker's rage passes just as quickly as it comes, mutating into sadness and self-loathing. Whenever he can, Booker attempts to drown himself in a bottle of wine, and the very next morning, Copley throws the entirety of his stash away, even as his own hands twitch for want of them.

*

The days between fights grow longer. Days between mental breakdowns and cries of anguish drift off until eventually, something like peace forms between them.

*

Andromache comes to visit Copley. She stays for Booker.

*

When Nile comes looking for Andy, she stays with them too, trading anecdotes about the missions they've been up to ever since...well, they don't mention it by name, but it's there like an elephant in the room.

*

The girls leave and eventually the boys drop by. A fight ensues, one that Copley has no business being a part of. At least according to Yusuf. But when the bearded man takes one look at the protective stance Copley is holding before Booker, he softens.

"Oh," he says. "I see."

Yusuf leaves after that. A quiet understanding has been reached, one that sounds dangerously close to an apology (accepted but not forgotten.) Nicki leaves soon after with nothing but gentle words for both Booker and Copley.

*

After a few years, Booker's family is back together and Copley is proud and grateful to be considered a part of it. His bed no longer feels painstakingly large. He is no longer alone. 

_They_ are no longer alone.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thx for reading!


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